Rocking in Hakata

Wait - seriously? They do quiz them? Man. In English? I can see how passing them a Japanese transcript would enable them to flub their way through a Japanese language Q&A;, but for crying out loud. Dude...that is tricky, Mel. How sad is that. I'd feel like poo if my teacher used me like that. Not to mention feeling wholly inadequate for the rest of my English-studying career. Sheesh. I agree - we need a Facebook Group. Shall I make it? I've never made one before. It could be like an adventure. :-)

Actually Deas, they do. Once you go to nationals, the judges ask them questions about things that they said in their essay; opinions and such. The judges play devil's advocate and drill the students. That doesn't necessarily rule out teacher essays though. All the teacher has to do is give the student a script of the essay in Japanese. So while the student may not know what they're saying in English, they know what they're saying in Japanese. Teachers here are pretty tricky.

Haha. It seems like every high school A L T I talk to has the same gripes =P We need a facebook club.

Mel, you sound right on the money. I'm glad that I'm not alone in disdaining the system.

Emily (me) - I kind of feel like that's what we do in the end. Hand them back a paper that's nearly entirely different from what they handed in. They're merely phonetically memorizing it anyway, so they don't really worry about comprehending what they are saying. I think they should tack on a question and answer session at the end to ensure that each kid is really, truly well versed in their topic. It'd instantly put the spotlight on the teacher-entries. I think. Dunno. Seems like a good thought anyway.

wow. I'd be frustrated too. What would happen if you handed back a pristine essay, but one that was completely off topic? I mean, what if it were about the compound structure of DNA or the effects of socioeconomic status on job infrastructures? Would it matter as long as it's correct?
ah well...

Oh more more thing. Were a student to ACTUALLY follow the rules, write and translate their own essay with minimal teacher corrections ... aka actually LEARN SOMETHING from this process, that student would never make it past the preliminary round because he/she would be competing with all the students who HAD perfect essays handed to them on a silver platter.

*sigh* Japan ....

You guys are all missing the point ...

I've corrected four so far. Here's the thing with this thing .... winning a speech contest means WAY MORE to the teacher than the student. The students just get a "job well done" when they win. TEACHERS get to put "I coached the #1 winning speech" on their resume...making them more prolific in the teaching community and netting them higher pay, the school gets to say "Our English program is awesome because we got the #1 winning student" ... meaning more English-savy future students will want to attend, and thus raising the level and reputation of the school.

I know this sounds stupid but that's the way it works. It's not about teaching at all.

Here's also the thing ... while entrance to the speech contest is voluntary, the students with potential are "highly encouraged" to attend. These students are the ones that get the gamit: aka heavy teacher edited and/or written completely essays.

Now here's the catch ... students that don't have potential but want to enter (one of the contests offers a monetary prize) will get only minimal attention. Of the four speeches I had to edit I totally saw the difference. The "minimal potential" students are the ones that more closely reflect actual student writing. You can work with those students. My two students entering the national prefectural contest though ... *sigh* at least I can say that the base idea is theirs ... for whatever that is worth.

I might have mentioned this, but one of my students won second in last year's prefectural speech contest. She was a little disappointed but overall okay with it (I gave her Hawaii omiyage and she was quite happy after that). The teachers were the ones that were the most upset.

In conclusion ..... "Speech contests are not about teaching or learning English. It's a highly-thought out tactical maunever with the ultimate goal being reputation and possibly financial gain. Students are nothing more than pawns lost in the system."

Nic - Yup. Frustrating.

Kathy - I only go to one school a day. This past week I've been at my base school. But that doesn't mean that I don't get work from the other schools. All of the work I did this week came from a different school, with a time limit, too. I email them a corrected paper by their deadline. That's the job. I might as well not even be in Japan for that part of it, eh? Pointless...but at least it's only a fraction of the job.

I don't understand. Does this mean that you or the teacher completely retypes their essay so that they never see the corrections? That would take a lot of time vs just giving them a marked up essay to correct themselves.

That's incredibly frustrating. I can't believe that they actually TOLD you point blank NOT to give back the corrected sheet. As teachers, they should completely realize that's worthless.

I haven't been asked to grade a single speech at my base school. I suspect this is because we are not entering.